


Not Gonna Get Us

by StainedGlassDreams



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst, BuckyNat Secret Santa, F/M, Love, New Year's Eve, buckynat - Freeform, winterwidow - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 05:33:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13311564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StainedGlassDreams/pseuds/StainedGlassDreams
Summary: New Year's Eve is a time of celebration, shedding the old and embracing the new. He doesn't think he'll ever not feel this weight.(A present for WhiteFenix)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whitefenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitefenix/gifts).



> For WhiteFenix and the prompt: "Sad angst", which *in best Obi-Wan Kenobi voice*, is my specialty. ;)  
> Hope you like it, and Happy New Year!

He likes crowds.  
Contrary to popular belief, or whatever the fuck Clint might joke about, he likes the feeling of celebrations. People being together.

A kid is sleeping on her Father's shoulder, bundled in what must feel like twenty parkas and a shirt.

It was the thing you missed being away at the war, fighting for the invisible freedoms you weren't able to see.   
He wears a leather jacket with a small black star patch on his left sleeve, a baseball cap on and hands in beaten up denim as he looks around the square.  
Another bittersweet reason to add to it: he could blend in and disappear without a word. Enjoy it without worry of police, or SHIELD surveillance. Whatever was left of it.  
The sky is in a self-made fog of smoke from fireworks and sparklers, a haze of gunpowder residue for good reasons for once, mingled with the smell of street vendors taking advantage of the cold weather and drunk people who need a hot dog. The weather is currently 22 degrees at 11:54pm on New Year's Eve and he's glad he came out instead of being cooped up, the carpet more than likely soon going to be worn from all the walking or exercising he does in the room (going to the exercise room means talking and he hasn't been in the mood.)  
New York isn't the best place to light things like this, the glittering ball up ahead reminiscent of that fact but-

Two boys run with sparklers in their hand as their Mom angrily chases them, as they laugh.

-like all things here, it somehow manages to make itself happen; land of dreamers and the impossible.  
He stops for a brief second as he swears he smells her cologne before his mind answers. "Get a hold of yourself. You're seeing ghosts again, do you know how many people wear that kind of perfume?", and his heart rate would have followed suit, lowering the increased speed before the world stopped as he saw flash of red hair.

"Five!"  
He begins to walk toward the woman, trying to keep up as his mind screams logic at him.  
"Four!", his heart tells him it's her. She's back from the dead, like everything in their fucked up lives.  
"Three!"  
He walks faster now, trying to catch up. He wants to hold her just one more damn time, tell her he was a fool for not wanting to just stay on the moon, stay on the ship. Tell her he loves her, one more time.  
"Two!"  
He edges past an angry elderly couple, their obscenities over his bumping causing them to drop whatever it was they were holding.  
"1!" He calls out for her, risking yelling as it would be almost impossible for anyone to hear him, much less pay attention.  
Explosions of cheers ring out as his heart sinks, the woman with red hair stopping to kiss a man that's more than likely her husband.

He swallows the false happiness, gulping it down like cheap malt liquor from the corner store that does nothing but gives taste to heartache. Reality slipping in all over again as he feels the same pain of the media tickers announcing the news.  
Couples kiss around him, families hug and confetti rains down.  
He stands in the crowd, and he's never felt so alone.


	2. Chapter 2

When he was a kid, he loved space. Loved espionage stories and war heroes, like his uncle who came back with a Purple Heart.

He toys with this thing Strange gave him a while back, an oracle locked inside an unsolvable cube. Strange told him an image would display of the thing a person wanted the most if they could solve it. He was more invested in it a few months ago to be honest but right now, he just needs a distraction. Like chewing on pencils during a test. Gripping your hands to forget the pain.

It's a cruel joke then, all the things he liked as a kid came true in the most fucked up way it could.  
Joined the army and became a "war hero" (he doesn't believe it.) Became a spy (for both sides). Went on the moon. Multiple times.  
And her voice faintly speaking in the echoes of his head is a sign he needs another pour of scotch, already on his second bottle.  
The phone buzzes with a message from Daisy. "You shouldn't be alone on New Year's. Come to Luke's place.", he leaves it unanswered, like all the other texts on his personal phone lately. Only responded to one from Steve. "Happy New Year, Buck. Don't do anything stupid on the first day of the year."  
Replies "Fine. Will do on the second."  
This is how it is now. Bury himself in work, come home, drink and do it again until this pain leaves.  
And he knows it never will.

He stops thinking for a moment as the thing clicks.   
He stares at it, the cube closing into itself, whirring and folding until somehow the entire thing folds onto the bottom of it. There's a small, round glowing sphere inside that hovers quietly above it, before seemingly displaying something he can't quite make out. As if hearing his thoughts, the picture inside suddenly projects throughout the space, filling the small of the living room.

It's New Years. 2012.  
There's a bottle of champagne and glasses lazily filled from the vodka they had while pouring it. The memory cuts in right as she laughs; not a chuckle or a small giggle, but an actual laugh.  
He smiles as she looks at him. "What're you smiling about?"  
"Nothing."  
Alcohol buzzing on their lips but their minds still there, she pushes him onto the sofa, small pieces of her hair falling from the sides of her face. "No one smiles at nothing."  
He reaches to kiss her, and it feels warm, tastes like bubbles and heaven. They pull away, green opals for eyes staring back at him. "Never at nothing." He pauses, before he says "I love you.". Not because he has to think about it, but that he can say it. They both can, after 4 lifetimes of being told love is just another parlor trick in a spy's toolbag; after not even uttering the phrase aloud in case the walls heard and it reached Karpov.  
They can say it now, shout it as loud as they want and yet, it only ever manages to tumble from their lips out of habit, when things might happen. At least, from his; feeling almost like a jinx if he were to ever admit it aloud. As if God himself might wake him up the moment he spoke it.  
But for the first damn time, there's no mission, no risk, nothing to interrupt. No one to listen besides them. So he says it, mind clear, eyes open and looking up at the most beautiful thing he will ever get to hold, see, touch or taste.  
"I know." She says, and he again tastes sweetness and love.

The blue glow becomes dim as it folds into itself, a new button appearing on the side for he guesses, his reward of solving it.  
His face is wet and his hand is shaking as he pinches the bridge of his nose, having buried the memory deep, where neither Leo nor him would ever reach it. The clock flashes 2:05am, and he's reminded in the most painful, ironic of ways, that it's the first year he'll never see her again.

He throws the half full glass of scotch against the wall as he yells, burying his face in his hands.


	3. Chapter 3

She lets go.  
"Damn honey, ain't there more where that came from?" He says, cheap liquor coming off his mouth like steam from a sewer grate.  
"Shut up." She says, pushing the random asshole away, as she wishes she had never done this, her heart actually hurting in her chest and her throat choking up. This was a mistake.

Waking up from the dead isn't as simple as Lazarus made it seem.  
Kobik had erased all trace that anything had happened but it feels like a phantom itch, a self-imagined crick in the back that occasionally will radiate down her entire spine.  
And the other itch is one she can actually scratch, as she tails James into the crowd, getting out of the apartment for the first time.

He seems okay, a small smile actually on his face as he looks at the kids and her head is screaming that she shouldn't be here. She has things to do and risking James knowing she's alive, endangering him again, is not only selfish but dangerously arrogant of her abilities not to be seen. And that's what trips up everybody in the end.  
Someone brushes past her and she acccidentally gets too close to him, her perfume registering on his radar and the thing that was meant as an underlying assurance has now escalated into something that could fuck up everything.  
Nat walks fast into the growing crowd as she feels him behind her.  
"Three!" The countdown continues almost painfully and she scrambles to think of a way out.  
"NATASHA!" He yells, not angrily or exposing but like how she feels whenever she sees him now, so close yet so damn far.  
There's a man alone and she reaches for him, planting a deep, convincing kiss on lips she doesn't know, making sure James would only ever see the back of her head. Letting her body language convince him as she feels disgusted at the man, and that she can actually feel James' heart breaking.  
She sees him walking back into the crowd, and slowly walking back to his apartment, his face white and his posture speaking everything. Defeated. Lost. Mourning.

\--::--

She recognizes the thing he's playing with, Strange's puzzle orb that he promised was worth solving.  
His eyes are far and away, his hands working the energy he isn't giving his mind. After a while, the thing opens spectacularly but..she can't what he's seeing. There's something possibly eminating from the blue, glowing sphere but to her eyes, all she sees is the thing himself.  
As she's about to close the binoculars, she sees him throwing the glass against the wall, yelling before seemingly crying.

And she's never felt more angry at herself. Angry at the circumstances. Or, more alone.


	4. Epilogue

He's dreaming of her.  
"I'm sorry." She says, her hand on his face.  
"Why're you apologizing?" He asks her, skin warm.  
She kisses near his ear. "You'll see. Just...forgive me."  
"...Okay." He replies, worried.  
"I'll be back. Just remember, we always have the moon, James."

He wakes up in a start, one of those dreams that feel to real to have been an imagining.  
There's a telescope he keeps in his room now, something he hasn't told a damn soul and never will.  
"Yeah." He says, to nothing at all. "We'll always have the moon, talia." He faces toward the moonlight, his heart moving with the newfound weight he'll never get used to.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from t.a.t.u's song of the same name.


End file.
